Opinion - The Korea Times

The tune of 'human rights'

By Donald KirkThe spectacle of the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh did more to lay bare the problems, conflicts and paradoxes of relations among the region’s wildly different and widely scattered nations than to resolve them.The fact that at least three of the leaders at this year’s ASEAN summit won’t be around next year only added to the failure of the gathering to accomplish a lot beyond statements and photo-ops.The successors to President Lee Myung-bak and China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will all face the same problems of regional confrontation and expansionism and flagrant human rights abuses while talking vaguely of turning East and Southeast Asia into one vast free trade zone.President Barack Obama by his presence in Phnom Penh did more to legitimize than to reform the outlook of Cambodia’s despotic leader, Hun Sen, a one-time Khmer Rouge fighter who’s been in charge there for nearly 30 years. Hun Sen could not have asked for a better forum at which to demonstrate his prestige ― and his right

Nov 22, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

The perils of 'embedding'

By Donald KirkThe concept of “embedding” journalists when they want to visit U.S. military units in combat has always been repugnant to me.That’s because, when I was covering U.S. forces in Vietnam a few decades ago, we never heard about “embedding.” Armed with press cards from MACV, the acronym for Military Assistance Command Vietnam, and JUSPAO, the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office, we could go anywhere on military transportation and hang out with troops.The Pentagon got the notion of “embedding” in response to Vietnam. Military people believed correspondents covering that war didn’t appreciate what a privileged lot we were, and they were convinced that negative or critical stories by free-wheeling journalists contributed mightily to the U.S. debacle.Then along came a woman named Paula Broadwell who was “embedded” in Afghanistan while writing up General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander there. Working on her happy-talking bio of the man, she had to have gone through the routine that afflicts all journalists when they join

Nov 15, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

No tears for Romney

By Donald KirkNow Mitt Romney can go back to doing what he does best, making hundreds of millions off other people’s sweat and tears, investing billions overseas and shipping away the jobs to go with his investments. And he can stop that nonsense about the “blind trust” in which he’d put his fortune, come out of the closet and resume his place among America’s richest.The sad news about the whole extravagantly expensive U.S. election process was how close the voters came to falling for a fast talker who looked presidential but had to have been one of the most forked-tongue super salesman ever to run for America’s highest office.Those who think he’d have gotten tough on China’s huge trade surplus, as he promised, only have to look at the record of his company in making a fortune off China to see the hypocrisy of his words. Now it will be interesting to see how quickly Romney returns to shipping money and jobs overseas – and doing whatever he can to oppose President Obama’s not too successful efforts at redressing the trade imb

Nov 8, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Obama's 'Perfect Storm'

By Donald KirkThe Perfect Storm that inundated the eastern United States this week provided a perfect pre-election boost for President Barack Obama. Republicans, such as New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie, are praising him for having done a great job coming to the rescue of millions.And Obama’s no longer annoying voters by calling for cuts in funding for FEMA ― the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Just cut defense and other stuff but leave FEMA alone!Republican candidate Mitt Romney loves to blame Obama for not waving the magic wand needed to turn America around economically over the heads of a Republican Congress in his four years in office, but he’s going to have trouble accusing Obama of messing up on the Perfect Storm.Or, to put it another way, Romney would love to see Obama mess things up in time to look bad by election day next Tuesday. You may be sure Obama’s managers see the response to the Perfect Storm as the climactic phase of his campaign. Forget about speeches and handshakes ― or rather, wrap all the campaigning into visits to disa

Nov 1, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Gulags in North Korea

By Donald Kirk What are the experts thinking when they talk in learned tones, replete with facts and stats, about issues and conditions for North-South Korean reunification, the pitfalls and problems, but omit passing mention of one of the most awful obstacles? At a conference this week bearing the portentous title, “Unification and North Korea,” I waited expectantly for just one of the presenters to touch, however briefly, on the question of human rights in North Korea. No, I didn’t expect anyone to carry on about the need for free speech, freedom of religion or a free press or any of that stuff. We know North Korea isn’t going to say fine to all that even if, in some unforeseen scenario, the regime up there actually does assent to a viable form of reunification. No, what I really wanted to know was what the presenters at the conference, staged by SaKong Il’s prestigious Institute for Global Economics, might say about the fate of the 200,000 or so North Koreans consigned to a vast gulag system from which there is no escape except death ― by starvation, disease, overwo

Oct 25, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

A friendship forged in blood

By Donald Kirk They formed one of oddest, blood-stained duos in Asian history. Cambodia’s king and prince and then king again, Norodom Sihanouk, bonded with North Korea’s “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung for reasons that had to do with their mutual hatred of the United States. Never did the adage, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, seem more relevant. The relationship between the two came up for speculation again after Sihanouk died this week in Beijing at the age of 89. He was there for treatment for a number of ailments, but China was not his first choice for a home in exile. He really preferred an enormous villa that Kim Il-sung had provided him after he was ousted from power in Phnom Penh in a U.S.-backed coup in March 1970. Sihanouk, having decided that communist rule was the way of the future, was on his way to Moscow when he was overthrown. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin told him the bad news. Sihanouk knew whom he could count on when it came to finding aid and comfort. He had met Kim Il-sung in 1965 when Sukarno, the Indonesian leader, “deliberately” pu

Oct 18, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Why Asia is off Romney’s radar

By Donald Kirk Sometimes you have to wonder what the Asian half of the world means to Americans. How could a serious candidate for president make a whole “foreign policy” address and leave out America’s allies from Northeast to Southeast Asia? Is there any chance that Mitt Romney will cast a wayward eye in this direction before Americans go to the polls in November? Sorry to say, but maybe Romney knows exactly what he’s doing when it comes to getting through to the American electorate. If you divided the world into basic foreign policy categories, nowadays the Middle East would rank at the top since that’s where the wars are going on, where U.S. troops are fighting. And that’s also where Iran poses a threat by supporting regimes such as the one in Syria and rebel movements along Israel’s border with arms and money ― and by going on with a nuclear program leading no one knows where. Number two, if the stories one reads and sees are any guide, comes Europe, the region from which the ancestors of the vast majority of Americans emigrated over the centurie

Oct 11, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

A boxer’s ‘forgotten war’

By Donald Kirk You know how little the Korean War weighs on the consciousness of American readers when you see a documentary and read an entire book about a famous American boxer and his epic battle with his Korean challenger and find virtually no mention of the “forgotten war.” That omission in “The Good Son,” the title of both the book and the documentary, may not matter to most Americans and many Koreans, but the Korean War did have a lot to do with the origins of Kim Deuk-koo. Kim was slugged to death nearly 30 years ago in the 14th round of a battle in Las Vegas to wrest the light heavyweight championship from Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, protagonist in the 316-page book by Mark Kriegel and the 80-minute documentary, timed for the anniversary of the fight in November. About midway into the book we get this image of this incredibly tough Korean street kid, a survivor of a virus that killed his father at the age of two and of conflict-ridden homes and fights with bullies and training as hard as only the Koreans can make it. When it comes to the Korean War that ended two ye

Oct 4, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Living down father’s legacy

By Donald Kirk The specter of Park Geun-hye running for president of the Republic of Korea evokes almost as many memories for those foreigners who were here during the reign of her father as it does for millions of Koreans who share quite differing perspectives. As a journalist in pursuit of about the only story that interested American and British editors at the time, I rushed for interviews all over Seoul with foes of the regime. You had only to tell a taxi driver outside the Chosun Hotel that you wanted to see Kim Dae-jung, and he sped you over to his residence in Mapo-gu. DJ loved to talk to just about anyone who called _ not exactly the response I got when he was president and his aides shielded him from those who might be critical. We didn’t ask much in those days about the economy other than to get a few pro forma briefings on the five-year plans that Park Chung-hee was dictating for the benefit of the rising leaders of Korea’s future global business empires and the bureaucrats dedicated to their success. We were far more interested

Sep 27, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Religious fervor on display

By Donald Kirk The populist spiritual yearnings of Koreans can be difficult to fathom. Just as K-Pop has taken off from Tokyo to New York, Korean religious movements draw adherents worldwide over seemingly insurmountable barriers. That was my sense after two days of uniquely elaborately contrived rituals, influenced by Christianity but in Korean settings, that had thousands of foreigners joining Koreans in prayer, weeping and singing and cheering. First there was the funeral last Saturday for the Rev. Moon Sun-myung before about 14,500 people inside a sparkling new hall that was a dead ringer for an American basketball arena worthy of any team in the National Basketball Association. In fact, mingling with the crowd inside the arena, before descending to a comfortable media seat right below the VIP meeting room, I was reminded of nothing so much as the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., home of the Washington Wizards. You have to visit the enormous complex set up by the Rev. Moon in Gapyeong northeast of Seoul to begin to imagine the dream of

Sep 20, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Read more

The tune of 'human rights'

The perils of 'embedding'

No tears for Romney

Obama's 'Perfect Storm'

Gulags in North Korea

A friendship forged in blood

Why Asia is off Romney’s radar

A boxer’s ‘forgotten war’

Living down father’s legacy

Religious fervor on display

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